bh. ii.] THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY. 31 



has noted the wide contrast between plants and animals ; 

 and in each of these great groups has furthermore made 

 sub-classes comprising respectively those which are useful as 

 food or as medicine for wounds, and those which are to be 

 shunned as poisonous or otherwise dangerous. While ; on 

 the other hand, the scientific naturalist divides and subdivides 

 until he acquires distinct conceptions of thousands of species 

 of insects, and ranks trees in separate classes according to 

 the myriad-fold shapes of their leaves, the spiral arrange- 

 ment of their branches, the number of their cotyledons, or 

 the mode of disposition of their woody fibre. 



All this will appear in a still clearer light when we 

 remember that the various processes which we habitually 

 group together under the name of " reasoning " are all of 

 them acts of classification. "The savage, having by ex- 

 perience discovered a relation between a certain object and 

 a certain act, infers that the like relation will be found in 

 future cases." . . . When in consequence of some of the 

 properties of a body, we attribute to it all those properties in 

 virtue of which it is referred to a particular class, the act is 

 an act of inference. " The forming of a generalization is the 

 putting together in one class all those cases which present 

 like relations ; while the drawing a deduction is essentially 

 the perception that a particular case belongs to a certain 

 class of cases previously generalized. So that, as classifi- 

 cation is a grouping together of like things, reasoning is a group- 

 ing together of like relations among things. And while the 

 perfection gradually achieved in classification consists in the 

 formation of groups of objects which are completely alike, 

 the perfection gradually achieved in reasoning consists in the 

 formation of groups of cases which are completely alike." * 



Since knowledge consists in classifying, it follows con- 

 versely that ignorance consists in inability to classify — in 

 the failure to group together similar phenomena ; and that 



'• Spencer's Essays, 1st series, p. 189. 



